2012 in Films: One Year, 365 Days and 617 New-To-Me Films

In 2010 I watched 517 new-to-me films, last year I watched a whopping 1,117 new-to-me films and this year my new-to-me total comes to 617. I did a pretty great round-up of my year over on my 3rd Anniversary post for the site, so I’m not going to repeat any of that and you can see month-to-month breakdowns of my new-to-me watching here. You can also see my favorite 2012 films here. After the cut, I’ll go through a few highlights of my viewing this year and share with you the one film that topped all of my viewing this year.

The main reason my viewing tapered off this year was a little thing I like to call Grad School. Grad School takes a lot of your time, my friends. It really does. Also, I got a part-time job at an art house movie theater. While that allowed me to see a lot of films in theaters for free, it also took a lot of my free time. Regardless, I think I did a pretty good job watching films this year. I also did a lot more rewatching of films this year than I did last year. I think it’s important to mix new-to-me watching with revisiting old favorites (or even sometimes watching films you used to hate, because you never know if you;ll change your mind!)

This is what a year’s worth a movie tickets looks like. Quite a few of the movies I saw in theaters I saw at film festivals and thus I don’t have tickets for them. But I think you get a pretty good picture of what my life is all about from this picture. I also watched a lot of films on streaming Netflix. They’ve added a lot of great classics and I got a Blu-ray player that streams the films straight to my television, so it’s almost like I have TCM (only, I still miss Robert Osborne).

Here are my press passes for the festivals I went to this year. God I love going to film festivals. They are crazy and they are exhausting, but they are the best thing in the world. If you’ve never gone to a film festival, I highly recommend that you go to one. And if you are a classic film aficionado like me, you owe it to yourself to get your butt down to Hollywood for the TCM Film Festival, because it will be the greatest weekend you will ever have.

So I made one movie watching New Year’s resolution last year and that was to watch more world cinema. So I started out strong in 2012 with a French movie and a Spanish movie and then I started watching a film with Marcello Mastroianni and I got hooked on Italian cinema and I’m afraid I never left that country. I wound up watching seven Michelangelo Antonioni films, five Marcello Mastroianni films and about twenty Italian films altogether. I did watch some films from other countries; France (as always), Germany, Japan, Kazakhstan and a few other places. So I guess I didn’t fail altogether, but I definitely need to try harder in this coming year to watch more world cinema.

I completed several director filmographies last year. This year the only filmography I know I completed for sure was Elia Kazan. He’s definitely one of my favorite directors. I’ve got his autobiography and dammit I’m gonna finish reading it this year. This year’s resolution ties in with last years; I’ve got a handful of filmographies I want to try to finish off: Tarkovsky (believe it or not, I’ve never seen any of his films!), Kubrick (I’ve only got one left! and I had all last year to watch it and I didn’t because I suck), Bogdanovich, Antonioni and Fellini. Then there are a few directors whose filmographies I probably won’t finish off, but I want to delve into: Kurosawa, Ozu ,Fassbinder (not to be confused with the actor), Varda and Sayles. I also want to try to finish watching all of the available Best Picture nominees; I’ve only got 67 left (out of 496).

So what was the one film I watched in 2012 that stood out above all others? It was none other than Wim Wender’s non-fiction dream-like film for Pina Bausch.

I wish I had seen this in 2011, because if I had it would have topped my list for favorite films from that year. As it happens, I didn’t get to see this wonderful film until February. Since then I have seen it in theatres four times. Yes, four times. I plan to watch it every single time I get that chance. If I could live in any film it would be this film. It is just so perfect.

Luckily for all of you, you can buy Pina from the Criterion Collection and you can also stream it on Netflix, but I definitely recommend you watch it in 3D (and I don’t often say that) in a theater if you get the chance. It is the only film I’ve seen where I felt the 3D actually added to the film, rather than distracted from it. I promise, it won’t be like anything else you’ve ever seen.

That was 2012 in films for me; I look forward to another year filled with cinema and I hope all of you had a great 2012 and have an even better year ahead!

aw- Pina was on Comcast OnDemand until yesterday, but my family kept on taking up the TV. Anyways, I hope I can see it on the big screen, in 3D, one day.
Looks like you had a fine movie-watching year!
I recommend that, after Kurosawa, start checking out some works by Masaki Kobayashi. The color horror film “Kaidan” might be a good entry point. And after Ozu, try Kenji Mizoguchi’s films if you haven’t seen some of his work already.
Have a great 2013!